


you knew it, you felt it.

by dylaesthetics



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 3b, 3x15, Angst, F/M, Falling In Love, Lydia's POV, Mischief Night, One Shot, Pining, Red String of Fate, Stydia, red string scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24717766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dylaesthetics/pseuds/dylaesthetics
Summary: Lydia's point of view of the red string scene and her first kiss with Stiles.
Relationships: Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 3
Kudos: 60





	you knew it, you felt it.

When Lydia had offered Stiles help with investigating Barrow’s disappearance, she didn’t realize it implied the pair would be working alone.

In the quiet of the boy’s bedroom, surrounded by hung up posters and pictures Stiles had collected throughout the years, Lydia lied across his bedsheets with shoes knocked off and bare feet hanging over the edge of Stiles’ bed, as well as red yarn scattered beside her as the different coloured ones lay untouched.

She watched Stiles pin a picture of Barrow on his murder board, next to Eichen’s, unconsciously grabbing the red string and tangling it around her fingers. As Stiles’ fingers brushed against the outstretched string on the wall, she remembered obliviously seizing them earlier today, after the coach had angrily forced the boy out of the school.

She felt guilty. All because of her own stupid, stupid feeling that turned out to have been entirely wrong and making silly, silly Stiles trust her every word, Lydia had earned him trouble. Barrow never _was_ hiding at the school. The buzzing had _nothing_ to do with his disappearance from the hospital.

Lydia, who’d only discovered her supernatural alias the other week, believed her powers to be helpless. And even now, with Stiles studying the pictures as she studied the boy instead, she considered herself powerless.

Stiles sighed loudly enough to put Lydia out of her trance and she became fully aware of her fixed focus on the boy stood in front of her. She looked away for a moment, afraid of getting caught if he were to swing around suddenly.

Lydia found it impossibly difficult not to look. Only yesterday, it felt, had she truly seen Stiles the first time, when her hands were cupping his cheeks on the ground of the boys’ locker room. When his toffee-coloured eyes bored into her shallow greens. When the late afternoon sunlight crept upon their faces and Lydia could count every one of his freckles spread across his skin. When she despairingly smashed her lips against his. When he surprised her and kissed her back almost immediately. When, shaken by desire she’d never felt before, gravity pulling them together and infatuation enough to be considered love, she leaned away - it had been too much. Lydia had felt too much.

_How’d you do that?_

Lydia recalled Stiles’ first words after she pulled only a couple of inches away from the boy, eyes wonderstruck and rich with lust. She couldn’t blink, scared that once her eyes close for a millisecond, Stiles will be gone and the moment – over.

_I, uh..._

She couldn’t think coherently.

_I read once that..._

Her heart was pounding in her ears.

_Holding your breath could stop a panic attack._

Logic, yes she could go with that.

_So..._

She licked her lips, the taste of Stiles’ still there.

_When I kissed you, you held your breath._

Lydia remembered every second, every syllable and every breath she skipped because she had never expected to kiss Stiles, or rather, _enjoy_ kissing Stiles so much that she couldn’t form a logical sentence.

So yes, she found it impossible not to look.

“What do the different coloured strings mean?” Lydia decided to break the silence, at last, to encourage her overwhelming thoughts about Stiles to evaporate.

It seemed Stiles had forgotten Lydia was in the room, as he glanced over to the girl and the yarns next to her on the bed, dumbfounded. “Oh, just different stages of the investigation. So green is solved, yellow is to be determined and blue’s just pretty.”

Lydia inspected the wall, seeing not a hint of green. “What does red mean?”

“Unsolved.”

“You only have red on the board.” Lydia pointed out matter-of-factly.

Stiles rolled his eyes, voice thick of annoyance. “Yes, I’m aware. Thank you.”

She grinned, appreciating his sarcasm. Seemed every non-life-threatening conversation she had with the boy involved very little seriousness and plenty of joking around. She liked that about their friendship, it was easy.

But the guilt quickly returned and replaced the innocence.

Lydia sighed to herself. “Did you get detention for pulling the alarm?”

“Yep. Every day this week.” Stiles anxiously tapped against the wall. “It’s okay, though. We were onto something.”

Regardless of his attempt at reducing her guilt, Lydia argued, red string stuck around her fingers. “Even though we couldn’t find any proof of Barrow being there?”

Stiles turned his head at Lydia, removing his hands from the murder board. Realizing just how desperately the girl had watched his every move, he approached her, kneeling on the ground inches away from her.

“Hey, Lydia,” he whispered softly, like a warm embrace on Lydia’s otherwise cool skin. “You’ve been right every time something like this has happened, okay? So don’t start doubting yourself now.”

Of course, Stiles would comfort her, despite her blame. Only Stiles would consider her feelings over the consequences of her foolish actions.

“No scent. No bomb. And I got you in trouble.” Lydia shifted her attention down to the string. Stiles moved his fingers and started untangling it, skimming over hers ever so lightly. Despite the mild pressure, her skin turned hot in every place he touched.

“Okay, look. Barrow was there. All right? You knew it. You felt it. Okay?” he reassured her, while Lydia looked back up and fixed in on Stiles’ face, as he still focused on untangling the string from her fingers. “And look, if you wanted to, I’d go back to that school right now and search all night just to prove it.”

_You knew it. You felt it._

Lydia wanted to scream, but not out of fright, or a prediction. She wished she could scream because she couldn’t phrase what she felt every time Stiles treated her with such care, celebrated her strength or observed what no one else ever had before, every time since she’d kissed him and they’d changed. What Lydia assumed she knew about the boy kneeling in front of her then vanished before her eyes; the known and unknown grew old and turned irrelevant. She was introduced to a different Stiles, one who she cared for more than anyone in the world and desired to rename her own.

Yet Lydia, with a mind typically logical - now seeking something no one’s ever been able to put into words, wasn’t one to express any emotion she experienced, even if it was sometimes manifested in her expressions and gestures. Even though she subconsciously understood that the word her mind was looking for is _love_ , Lydia wasn’t brave enough to admit it just yet.

And when Stiles locked his eyes with hers, that she’d now realized had filled with tears, it felt like the first time again.

**Author's Note:**

> the red string scene is my absolute favourite stydia scene and you have no idea how happy i was when it was one of the scenes included in 6x09 as lydia was remembering stiles and realized she's in love with him. i'm sure this was the moment she knew for sure.
> 
> @piinofs on twitter


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